Realize VoIP, January 2012

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In This Issue

• Editor Notes
• LTE and VoLTE
• VoLTE Interoperability - are we there yet?
• What makes VoLTE testing complex and challenging?
• Product News and Updates
• Blog Highlights
• Important News
• Past Webinars

Editor Notes

By Amir Zmora, VP Marketing & Products

Back in November 2011 I had the pleasure to attend and speak at the first Upperside VoLTE conference. I provided some pre-event information in my blog post: VoLTE & OTT: Will They Remain Forever Apart? Looking at the agenda of this conference one can see that main areas of discussion were on the value of VoLTE to the service provider, the advanced services it brings and how to take this pretty complex set of standards and network architecture and make it all interoperable across devices, servers and networks.

Our newsletter extends this discussion shedding more light on these topics. Why Over-The-Top (OTT) Service Providers are competition to the incumbent Service Provider on one hand but also an opportunity to launch new, differentiating and revenue generating services across networks if partnerships are built right.

How are the standards being addresses to define the right subset required for launching VoLTE services (IR.92) and growing them further to more advanced services (IR.94)? How are new devices and servers being tested for cross vendor interoperability in pre-launch phase both in a multi-vendor environment and in the vendors' and service providers' labs and networks?

LTE and VoLTE

By Sagi Subocki, Director of Product Management

There is a sense of concern in the telecom industry from Over-The-Top (OTT) Services. OTT Services today are showing their marks on the incumbent service providers. Voice, video, messaging and many more services are available for free from OTT players and leaving the operators to try to find ways to overcome this challenge. And now, with the promise of LTE bringing high bandwidth, low latency mobile communications, the concern from OTT services is at a peak.

But the operators still have advantages over OTTs: They control the network, they have direct billing access to the customer, they have full information of the customers, and the customers trust the operators. With IMS, they will be able to leverage on these advantages and provide either alone, or in cooperation with OTTs, even better services than what OTTs are currently capable of.

So the operators need to embrace IMS. IMS is a standard VoIP architecture that provides them with a solution they can deploy and manage while providing all of the capabilities operators have today in their network such as quality of service, interoperability, security, emergency calling, roaming and more - things that mobile VoIP companies don't deal with today.

IMS is the' enabler for the operators to continue to be the service provider of the standard telephony services, as well as advanced services, over the upcoming all IP LTE access networks. But implementing and deploying IMS will take time which the operators do not have as LTE is happening now.

An initiative which started under the codename "One Voice" and has grown up to VoLTE has been adopted by the GSMA. The goal of VoLTE is simple: make sure that everything you can do today on a GSM network (=a circuit switched network), you can do over IMS using VoLTE. It takes IMS, removes everything that is more than a simple voice call, SMS or supplementary service and ignores it; it also indicates which option to use in your implementation, making it easy for developers to work with. This allows bringing a quick standard and interoperable solution to the market and enabling the operators to have an answer today.

While the first VoLTE specification is focusing on voice and SMS (IR.92), it is only the first step. IR.94 is already in advanced stages and with it brings Video into VoLTE. Eventually, VoLTE will grow into providing rich communication suite (RCS) services that includes presence, instant messaging and video services among others.

VoLTE Interoperability - are we there yet?

By Anatoli Levine, Sr. Director of Product Management - Americas, TBU and President, IMTC

For any technology which is based on open standards, interoperability is a key to practical success, and not for one single player, but for the whole ecosystem. Interoperability means that multiple products from the multiple companies can work together. Seamlessly. In the real life. Or at least, this is an ultimate goal and promise of interoperability. Of course, if proprietary solution is delivered, all you need to worry about is that all the elements of your solution will work together - you don't even need to call it "interoperability". However, in today's world, delivering fully closed solution is not possible anymore. Even Apple, the apogee of the proprietary solutions, can't live without open standards - TCP/IP, H.264, USB, Bluetooth and many other open standards are making Apple devices useful.

Yes, so we do understand that open standards are important. However, it is very difficult to achieve interoperability on the level of the whole open standard. Why? Because standards are created to define as many features as possible, with the goal of enabling as much functionality as possible. However, practical implementation of the standard, whether it is a device or an application, only includes a subset of features available in the standard (outside of mandatory requirements required for the standard compliance). If each and every manufacturer would just implement their particular subset, this will lead to standards-compliant but largely not interoperable products. The way to solve the issue is by defining so called Profile which specifies particular set of features needed to achieve a specific functionality. Once profile is defined, the companies can focus on achieving full interoperability within that subset of functionality, by means of so called InterOperability Testing (IOT) process.

As there are multiple entities (device vendors, service providers, solution providers, etc.) involved in such IOT process, it needs to be somehow managed. Typically, such management is achieved via an industry organization, a so called Industry consortium, which is created by the all interested parties. Once created, a consortium takes lead on defining the testing plans, brining participants together for the testing, tracking the progress of the testing and overall level of interoperability - and while doing all of it, also ensuring equal and open access to the process for all interested parties.

Let's make our discussion practical. The particular standard we are looking at here is IMS, and the profile is VoLTE. As the standard is quite substantial and complex (had being in the works by 3GPP since early 2000s), it is not surprising that there are multiple consortium working in the area of interoperability of VoLTE. IMTC, MSF, ETSI are all playing very active role in the process of IOT. During 2011, both IMTC and MSF conducted successful VoLTE IOT events. IMTC tested VoLTE as part of the annual SuperOp interoperability event in May, which was the first ever successful multi-device multi-vendor IOT done over live LTE Core (here is some of the press on that). The event's focus was on the UNI (User to Network Interface) and it covered as LTE voice call establishment, supplementary services (OIP, OIR, TIP, TIR, HOLD and 3-way conferencing) and connectivity to legacy services. In October of 2011, MSF conducted successful IOT event with the focus on Network to Network Interoperability (NNI) - you can find more information here.

So then the level of interoperability should be high, right? Well, the train has left the station, but hadn't reached the final destination yet. While all major operators and many equipment manufacturers are saying that they are fully ready to deliver VoLTE, one challenge is to generate users demand and excitement to something as simple as voice call. Absence of demand from users translates into low motivation for the device manufacturers to add VoLTE support to the phones which are sold today, which translates into... well, you got the picture. Will this situation change in the near future? Yes, as soon as VoLTE will evolve into something beyond voice - Video over LTE, for instance, has a chance of turning up the interest and demand, which will make all the successful IOT results quite handy. So answering the main question - no, we are not there yet - but get ready, kids, the ride is about to get a lot more exciting.

What makes VoLTE testing complex and challenging?

By Eli Cohen, Director of Product Management

As the need for VoLTE is growing dramatically around the world, developers are spurred to bring implementations to the market this year. As a result, standards are not always adhered to and chipset and handset vendors have to endure end user experiences that leave much to be desired in terms of quality. Heavy investments are being made in the development of VoLTE handsets. Unlike the global Internet, IMS/LTE networks contain additional embedded control functions geared to provide resource control, security, and QoS on the network. Providing a high level of quality to end users is of critical importance to the new VoLTE service. It is essential for service providers to maintain high quality and ensure end user satisfaction.

When preparing new real-time voice and video over LTE, service providers must assess whether their network can provide and maintain the expected quality of service (QoS). Service providers must make informed decisions regarding which network devices to deploy, the amount of bandwidth needed, and the optimal network configuration required to support voice and video over LTE technologies and detect faults that can affect its usage. A proactive approach is needed to ensure VoLTE readiness before a complete deployment, as the success of these services depends on the ability of the network to support them as well as on service readiness.

End user-experience testing plays a critical and vital role in product development and quality assurance cycles, helping chipset and handset vendors to develop high-end VoLTE services.

What makes VoLTE testing complex and challenging? Today, it is important to test a complete infrastructure including LTE enhanced radio access, Evolved Packet Core, IMS UE and IMS Core. Many parameters need to be taken into consideration, such as interoperability, audio and video quality measurements, video telephony including motion level, codecs, IMS/LTE test case simulation with different scenarios emulating the network's UE and IMS core, QoS, as well as interoperability test cases. Interoperability test cases were developed by the IMTC IMS Activity Group, which was designated by GSMA (the owner of the GSMA PRD IR.92 VoLTE specification) as the leading testing group. Covered areas include LTE voice call establishment and supplementary services. Before commercial services can be deployed, there is a clear need for an interoperability testing solution.

"Voice over LTE is gaining momentum," said Eli Cohen, creator of RADVISION's Testing Suite. "There is a clear need for interoperability before as well as after the VoLTE service is deployed. RADVISION is honored to be a part of the effort to realize this goal by providing the ProLab VoLTE Testing solution. ProLab VoLTE is fully interoperable with the latest IMS/VoLTE release and provides the capability to test and measure the end user experience using unique voice and video algorithm measurements that enable chipset and handset testers to automate VoLTE testing, thereby reducing the testing time."

• For LTE chipset and handset vendors it is important to have a feature testing system for IMS UE applications and IMS servers capable of simulating signaling and media, including end user experience and call features testing. It is extremely important to be able to quickly and reliably pinpoint and resolve quality-related problems as they occur.
• For IMS core vendors it is important to perform capacity testing, which typically refers to performance metrics and the simulation of thousands of handsets.
• For service providers it is important to perform interoperability and end user experience testing, audio metrics and the simulation of thousands of handsets.

Providing a high level of quality can present a considerable challenge and is important to ensure VoLTE service readiness.

Product News and Updates

The following are new RADVISION product releases:

• BEEHD for Personal Devices version 3.0 was released, running on several devices including TI OMAP4 Blaze tablet, Samsung Galaxy tab 10.1, Pantech Vega LTE, and HTC Desire HD, providing up to 720p@30fps. Check out the video on the RADVISION YouTube channel.
• SIP Developer Suite 6.1 was released. This version is fully VoLTE compliant and includes a VoLTE Package that has VoLTE call scenarios samples of all VoLTE call Scenarios.
• The MTF 4.7 was released. In this version there is support for Semi attended transfer and Blind Transfer to a specific destination. We also added support for Reed Solomon FEC protection and H.460 NAT Traversal support for H.323.

The new version above is available to customers under maintenance agreements.

Blog Highlights

Here's a quick glance at some recent relevant and interesting blog posts on our blog network:

VoLTE & OTT: Will They Remain Forever Apart?

VoLTE, OTT and what is in-between them - that is the subject of an upcoming panel at the VoLTE 2011 conference Amir Will participate in. And we've got a discount for you as well.

Read more »

Google's Trojan Horses are their Drivers of Innovation

Google is using Android and Chrome as their Trojan horses to give them a competitive edge that others will be hard pressed to achieve.

Read more »

Important News

• RADVISION Award-winning H.323 Stack is now available for iOS and Android OS
• RADVISION BEEHD for Desktop received the TMC 2011 Unified Communications Excellence Award

Past Webinars

In Closing

This newsletter aims to be useful to you. If you are not finding value in it, PLEASE REPLY and tell us how we can improve. For more information from RADVISION, you are invited to follow the links below:

• Read our blogs: http://blog.radvision.com
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Thank you for reading our newsletter!

RADVISION's Community Team

http://www.radvision.com